Not applicable.
The present invention relates to telephone communication in general and relates in particular, to assisted telephone communication for persons having attenuated hearing capability.
Much of modern personal communication, both in social and business environments, takes place through the telephone. Yet, there are many persons in society who have attenuated hearing capability and are thus disabled or incapable or handicapped in using the voice telephone system commonly in use today. For person who are deaf, there has for some time been a system of communication through the telephone system which has been used by the deaf community. That system makes use of devices known as telecommunication devices for the deaf (TDDs), also known as text telephones (TTYs). Current TDDs are electronic devices consisting of a keyboard and a display and a modem, to acoustically or directly couple to a telephone line, which permit the user to type characters into their keyboard, with the characters then be encoded and transmitted over the telephone line to be displayed on the display of a communicating or remote TDD.
Current TDD communication is conducted in a code, known as Baudot or Baudot/Weitbrecht, which evolved historically at a time when many telecommunication devices for the deaf were based on mechanical or electromechanical devices rather than the current generation of electronic devices. Accordingly, the Baudot protocol was constructed for a set of constraints which are no longer relevant to present day devices. The original Baudot protocol was a uni-directional, or simplex, system of communication conducted at 45.5 baud. The normal Baudot character set consists of a 5 bit characters, and the system is a bi-tonal system based on 1400 and 1800 hertz tones. The protocol does not utilize a carrier when no signals are being sent, and because of the protocol for character transmission, which includes a start bit and at least 1xc2xd stop bits, it is only possible to send approximately 6 characters per second, one way, during conventional Baudot communications.
In spite of its limitations, the Baudot communication system, and TDDs, are widely used within the community of persons who are deaf. In addition, systems have been implemented to permit users of the TDD system to communication with hearing people. This is done through the use of a so-called xe2x80x9crelay.xe2x80x9d A relay, as used herein, refers to a system of voice to TDD communication which uses an operator referred to as a call assistant who serves as an intermediate between a hearing user on one telephone line and a deaf TDD user on a second telephone line. The call assistant wears a headset to communicate by voice with the hearing user and also has access to a TDD so that the call assistant can communicate with the deaf user via the TDD. Thus, the call assistant serves as an intermediary between the deaf person and the hearing person so as to, in effect, translate from voice to digital electronic forms of communication.
While the TDD communication system has a constituency within the deaf community, it is not widely used by persons who are deficient in hearing capability, but would not describe themselves as deaf. Many otherwise fully able persons, particularly elderly ones, suffer attenuated hearing capability due to aging, disease, or other traumatic condition. Many persons who have some degree of hearing capability left do not consider themselves xe2x80x9cdeaf,xe2x80x9d and therefore will tend not to avail themselves of specialized equipment intended for the deaf community. If a person has spent much of his or her life engaged in oral communication using the spoken word in the telephone, it is difficult to accept that telephonic communication may become difficult or impractical as one""s hearing declines in efficiency. No system has heretofore existed which is capable of assisting the person who has significant hearing loss, in communication over the telephone in a manner which emulates, to the fullest extent possible, the normal telephonic communication patterns of hearing people.
The present invention is summarized in that a text enhanced telephonic device is made available to persons who have a hearing loss. The text enhanced telephone will, to the user, operate like a normal telephone but will, in addition to receiving normal voice communication, permit the user to receive the words spoken by the remote party in a visual format on a visual display located on the text enhanced telephone which the user is operating.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a text enhanced telephone which may be operated by a user who is hearing deficient in a manner like all conventional telephones, but with the added capability that received communications are displayed in text so that the user can read the communications to supplement any words which are not understood verbally.
It is a feature of the present invention that the operation of the text enhanced telephone can be made transparent to the user so that little or no retraining or otherwise adaptive behavior needs to be taught to the user of the system.
Other objects, advantages, and features of the present invention will become apparent from the following specification when taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.